People on board

WHITLAM, Claude

Claude Whitlam was born in 1899 in Sheffield to George Whitlam and Edith Mary Dyson. Edith had married Sydney Dickens Burkinshaw in 1894 but he died the following year, leaving a son, Sidney Lawson Burkinshaw. Edith then married George Whitlam in 1897 and, as well as Claude, they had Dennis in 1902 and Gladys in 1907. George Whitlam was a Stockbroker’s Clerk and in the 1911 census his stepson Sidney, then sixteen, gave his occupation as Stockbroker’s Junior Clerk. At that time they were living in South View Road, south of Sheffield city centre but moved to the suburb of Pittsmoor, north of the city, before 1918.

Claude Whitlam enlisted in the East Riding of Yorkshire Yeomanry at Pontefract and in October 1918 was with the 2/1st, a training and draft-supplying regiment that had moved to Ireland in April of that year. Whether returning to England on leave or for deployment, he travelled on RMS Leinster on the 10th. He did not survive the sinking but his body was recovered and he was buried in Grangegorman Military Cemetery in Dublin.

However, in December 1920, his remains were brought to Sheffield and reinterred in Burngreave Cemetery in Pittsmoor. His name is recorded on the Memorial Tablet in Christ Church in Pittsmoor. Every year until 1939 his family placed an In Memoriam notice in the Sheffield Evening Telegraph to honour his memory.